‘Outside deer are nowhere to be seen and inside / the radio spectrum fills up with sorrowful little packets of data.’
It is the coldest noon in twenty years.
Outside deer are nowhere to be seen and inside
the radio spectrum fills up with sorrowful little packets of data.
Wasn’t there a hart at the window yesterday, he thinks,
weren’t there huge antlers.
What is there to be said of the unanswerable
phone ringing…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘My celebrity accumulated like a kidney stone: / children, pets, even some corvids recognised me’
‘Once upon a time when suicide was a thought / folded inside a thought’
Poetry by Joe Carrick-Varty.
‘i think again, love, that t believe in this / would be t chapen the accident of our own gift’
Two poems from James Conor Patterson’s collection, bandit country.
Siobhán Mannion shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘I’m always interested to hear about people’s writing spaces; I presume the canary is a quiet bird.’
‘The only thing on the schedule was spa.’
Lauren Oyler on her trip to Marienbad.
